Les Capitalistes: The First Capitalists and the Debt Created by Haitian Slavery

Abstract

Abstract:"Les Capitalistes" re-creates the gradual emergence in print of the word capitaliste during the second half of the eighteenth century. It retraces the word's transformation from a term used to refer vaguely to any wealthy individual to one with a meaning still familiar today, that of a high-stakes investor. As a result of this evolution, by the 1790s, men who made major investments in the hope of significant profits were first known as capitalistes. The original capitalistes participated in the financing of France's slave trade with its most lucrative colony, Saint-Domingue (Haiti), and subsequently in the financing of the debt created when the Haitian Revolution destroyed both Saint-Domingue's economy and the Haitian slave trade.